BlackBerry's Keyboard Is Back—But Will It Sell?

Sophia Cheng bought her first BlackBerry, a red Curve, in 2007, and has been a loyal user ever since.

ENLARGE

The BlackBerry Q10
BlackBerry

Now Ms. Cheng, a 31 year-old public-relations consultant from Vancouver, British Columbia, is considering a switch to a
Google
Inc.
Nexus smartphone. The only reason she hasn't yet: She wants to test out the new BlackBerry, "the one with the keyboard," she says.

Earlier this year,
Research In Motion
Ltd.
launched a touch-screen phone three years in the making, the BlackBerry Z10. While the success of that rollout is still uncertain, RIM is gearing up for its second act of 2013: the debut of the keyboard-equipped Q10.

The device will hit Canada and the U.K. first, and the U.S. sometime after that. U.K. carriers have said the phone will start shipping as soon as Friday, while in Canada carriers and retailers like
Best Buy
Co.
will begin selling the phone on May 1, RIM said Tuesday.

The new Blackberry Q10 has the hallmarks of the popular smartphone but with the keyboard users love. WSJ's Katherine Boehret looks at whether this new version can win back some of BlackBerry's former users.

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The Q10 looks similar to the once-popular BlackBerry Bold, which was introduced in 2009 and was the last phone to run on the company's old operating system. It will have both a classic physical keyboard and a small touch screen and will run on RIM's new operating system, BlackBerry 10. Carriers and retailers are advertising the device at roughly $200 with a multiyear plan, putting it in line with other high-end devices on the market.

RIM is counting on keyboard-loving users like Ms. Cheng to snap up the new model. There is still a big market out there for keyboard-equipped smartphones, and RIM dominates it. The big problem: It is shrinking fast.

Last year, IDC estimated that the world-wide keyboard smartphone market was 62.8 million units, down from 100.2 million units in 2011. RIM's share of that market is 47%, according to IDC.

Nokia
Corp.
has long been a strong player in the keyboard market, and more recently Asian phone makers like
Samsung Electronics
Co.
and Huawei Technologies Co. have also started pushing more keyboard-equipped phones into developing countries.

The market for touch-screen-only phones, meanwhile, jumped from 372 million units in 2011 to 650.1 million units last year, according to IDC. RIM's share of that pie: 3%.

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RIM executives say they understand the shift. That is why they chose to roll out the all-touch Z10 ahead of the Q10, they say. RIM can count on a loyal following of keyboard-using customers, but it had to make an extra push for its touch-screen device. Chief Executive
Thorsten Heins
also said RIM knew the all-touch Z10 was probably better suited to succeed in the exploding "bring-your-own-device" market, in which workers are increasingly using their personal phones for work.

Still, the decision baffled some customers and carriers.

"I do wish they came out with [the Q10] first or at the same time," Ms. Cheng says. "I think a lot of people are on the fence and want a new phone, and they may have made their decision already. I don't know why it took so long."

When RIM told carrier partners months ago that it would be launching the Z10 first, carrier executives expressed disappointment that both phones wouldn't be coming out at the same time, according to people familiar with the matter. When they asked for clarification about the staggered-launch strategy, RIM executives didn't elaborate, according to these people.

"Our approach to launching BlackBerry 10 was to focus first on bringing our all-touch BlackBerry Z10 smartphone to market, and then follow with the 'qwerty' BlackBerry Q10," a RIM spokesman said in a statement.

Since that launch schedule was relayed to carriers, the Q10 rollout has slipped a bit. It was originally scheduled to launch about eight weeks after the Z10. When the Q10 arrives in the U.K. and Canada at the end of this month, the gap between phone launches will be roughly 12 weeks.

One reason for the delay is that RIM has had a tougher time than it expected formatting the new operating system to the smaller Q10 screen, according to a person close to the company. When performing functions on the screen, "The initial thought was, 'Oh, we'll just scrunch it down,'" according to this person. "But you end up with very little screen real estate. They have had to redesign apps [for the Q10] without truly redesigning them, and that's really hard. It's taken longer than anticipated."

A RIM spokesman said it is "delivering the BlackBerry Q10 according to our stated plans."

Sales of the Z10 have been decent in some global markets. RIM says it sold one million Z10s in the last quarter, and executives have called the U.K. and Canada launches of the Z10 the company's "best ever." But the U.S. launch hasn't looked as strong.

Carriers like
AT&T
Inc.
and Verizon Wireless haven't put full-throated marketing campaigns behind the phone. In retail outlets, the Z10 is often placed behind
Apple
Inc.
iPhones and Samsung Electronics Co. Galaxy devices.
Sprint Nextel
Corp.
, the third biggest U.S. carrier, has said it would only carry the Q10.

Several analysts say they believe Z10 sales in the U.S. slowed down dramatically after the opening weekend, and there has already been some discounting.
Amazon.com
Inc.
is now offering the Z10 for $99 with a multiyear contract. RIM has said the U.S. roll out is "meeting expectations."

All of which makes the stakes of the Q10 launch that much higher for RIM. Many analysts think sales of the Q10 will be brisk, as longtime current BlackBerry users upgrade their phones.

BlackBerry fan Antonio Torres, 33, a small business consultant in the Bronx, has been using an older touch-screen BlackBerry, the Torch. But he says he's planning to buy a Q10 as soon as it is available. "I want my keyboard back," he said. "That's what it comes down to."

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